New Irish Anthology Series Launched

These forty poems in English, by Irish poets or poets living in Ireland, were published in books, magazines and newspapers over the twelve-month period between July 2005 and July 2006. About a third appeared in Ireland, the rest in the US and the UK. They come from little-known, hard-to-find publications, as well as from prestigious imprints such as the New Yorker and the TLS. If nothing else, this selection reflects the broad geographical reach of places where poems from Ireland can turn up nowadays. It also shows the esteem  – surely disproportionate for a small damp teddy-bear-shaped island?  – which Irish poetry has earned throughout the Anglophone world. 

Also – and this may not be such a good thing – the selection shows a remarkable degree of cultural cohesion. These poems, though they are by no means uniform, clearly share a tradition. They may be written in New England or eastern Europe but they are meant to be understood in Cork and Galway, and vice versa. They assume familiarity with our history; with our bogs and weather; and that we’ve all read our Yeats. There is indeed an assumption that Ireland has established a demotic culture and therefore we can project confidently into the world. This gives these poems a directness, energy and agility drawn from the vigour of vernacular language – whereas in the past, Irish poetry often suffered from stylistic eccentricity. It found a virtue in a distinctive Irishness (Austin Clarke) or a resolute non-Irishness (Brian Coffey), and in both cases poetry was practised as a rather highbrow art – whereas today’s poets have a welcome sense of audience.

The danger with such confidence is complacency. I confess that in my reading I found a lot that was garrulous and predictable, and noted a pretty generous tolerance among editors to put up with it. So, in making my selection, I was undoubtedly drawn to poems that do their job without too much fuss or sweat.

Some of those included are young enough to be my children. Several others are poets I grew up under: literary ‘godfathers’ whose work formed my taste in the 1970s. So, in a sense, this book – though strictly a snapshot of one year’s work – is also a reflection of Irish poetry over half a century, a period when (to state the obvious) the country changed. I leave to readers to decide to what extent these poems measure up to the scale and pace of those changes. But, for me, the book was worth the effort alone just to come across ‘Superfresh’ by Thomas Kinsella – who was on the Leaving Certificate curriculum by the time I left school. This encounter, literally both brief and touching, with a Russian immigrant in a supermarket renews one’s belief in poems as the best means by which the strangeness of experience is registered.

I have limited myself to one poem from each poet. Given the hundreds now publishing, this seemed a necessary restriction – but one which I suspect, say, thirty years ago might not have been as rewarding. A smaller roster with more poems per person would have worked better then. Also, one would have been hard put to find many women. Although the balance in this selection is still numerically in favour of the men, I’d suggest it may be a closer call in terms of weight.

But I didn’t worry much whether a poem was by a man or a woman, or by someone famous or one I hadn’t heard of. And I didn’t think about the type of poems I was choosing or what they were about. I acted more like someone who climbs a small hill every morning and builds a cairn with those stones that catch the eye along the way. I didn’t work towards an overall shape, convinced that an assortment is interesting for its variety. The contrast between poems, the way they rub against each other, can bring out their characteristics, the uniqueness of shape and sound that makes them memorable.